Spooksville #17 The Thing in the Closet and #18 Attack of the Killer Crabs

In Spooksville #17, The Thing in the Closet, Cindy is afraid of her closet.  She wakes up at night, fearful of what might be inside the closet.  One night, she sees a strange green glow coming from behind the closet door, which is slightly ajar.  The second time that Cindy sees the light, she calls Adam, who races over to help.  When Adam arrives, Cindy has disappeared.  The children devise a scheme that will allow them to follow Cindy and hopefully save her.

I think we can all relate to the idea of being afraid of what lurks behind a slightly open door at night in a dark room.  I prefer my closet door to be shut.  There is something about an open door...

I enjoyed this book.

In Spooksville #18, Attack of the Killer Crabs, huge crabs that are forty feet in diameter come ashore near Spooksville, destroying everything in their path.  Bum, of course, knows all about the nearby underwater city inhabited by the ancient race of Lemurians. Bum believes that the Lemurians have sent the giant crabs on shore.  The children must find a way to get down to the underwater city so that they can talk sense into the Lemurians.

I love how Bum, who is the town's resident homeless person, knows all about the supernatural creatures that live in the area.

I greatly enjoyed both books.

I feel like the higher-numbered titles in the series are the more creative ones, and it's a shame that these titles have not been reprinted.  Strangely Simon and Schuster has only reprinted the first half of the series, and the first half is easier to find in the original editions.  Publishers always reprint the books that are easier to find, presumably because those titles sold more copies.  They fail to understand that the later titles are the ones in greater need of being reprinted.